NE-Primary Night Results

[Sam Spade]

West Virginia also has a primary this evening.

[Sam Spade]

If Heineman holds on, it would be a signal to me that McCain does not have ultra-strong national support within the GOP.

What's been big going on here behind-the-scenes is Chuck Hagel's endorsement of Heineman, which was countered of recent times by McCain coming in and endorsing Osborne.  If McCain could go and affect the primary results against the chief state GOP point man (Hagel) at present, it would show a really strong presence for McCain within the GOP that could make him the perennial nominee going into 2008 (he is still the favored, however).

Those who care about the immigration issue should know that Osborne was in favor of Bush's guest worker plan (not a large deal to me), but more importantly, was in favor of the children of illegals getting in-state tuition fees.

For this reason, (as there were no other huge differences between the candidates) I supported Heineman.  Still do.

Anyways, Heineman's won this one.  It's over.

[Sam Spade]

Also, Ricketts has won the primary.  Probably the strongest candidate out of three, as he can spend his own money to his heart's content, though he'll most likely lose.

[Sam Spade]

Somehow I have a tough time buying that immigration is the #1 issue in NEBRASKA. What next, are results in Alaska and Vermont going to show that voters there care about immigration more than anything else?

Well, it was a big issue in this race.  This does not, of course, mean that it will be a big issue in other races.  The simple fact is that this is one area where the two candidates disagreed and it got magnified to the political stage due to debate in the Legislature and the national political situation.  This may or may not happen in other places and it may only happen in primaries.

The other big issue, which also shows in the results where Heineman destroyed Osborne in the rural areas, was in Heineman's opposition to rural school reorganization (where he vetoed the bill in the Legislature) and in Osborne's inability to deal with the issue.

The Lincoln Journal-Star in its recap of the race, highlights the issues that I'm talking about in its analysis of what happened on election night:

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/05/10/elections/2006/may/doc446141c0eec15506554528.txt